Editorial: PRC Gets It in Gear To Regulate Gas Card Use

Perhaps it’s a sign of things to come that the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission has put in place actual policy governing use of state vehicles and state gasoline cards.

Approved unanimously by the PRC this month, the new policy applies to all commissioners and employees who “drive or occupy” state vehicles and restricts those vehicles’ use to official purposes.

Chief of Staff Johnny Montoya says it also has “language that deals with receipts for all transactions. There is specific language dealing with how the logs for each vehicle should be filled out. There are consequences for violating the policy. It talks about gas card use, what’s required for a transaction. I mean, it’s night and day.”

Considering the dark days of then-commissioner Jerome Block Jr. racking up $8,200 in charges between January and mid-June (far more than any PRC member) and the State Auditor’s Office finding 20 people made $32,259 in potentially unauthorized purchases with PRC-issued gas credit cards last year, day would be a good thing for taxpayers.

“In a nutshell, I think we have so much more accountability in this policy,” Montoya says.

Accountability is something that has been sorely lacking at the PRC, which easily has the most wide-ranging powers in the state, regulating telecommunication, electric, natural gas and water utilities; property, vehicle, health and title insurance; railroad, ambulance, taxi, bus, van, towing, shuttle and limousine companies; corporations; and the state fire marshal.

Yet commissioners have had their own responsibility issues, from an $841,842 sexual harassment settlement to a drug paraphernalia arrest to the hiring of an embezzler to state wages being garnisheed for nonpayment of debt to the bashing in of a romantic rival’s head with a rock to lies on a campaign finance report to multiple felony pleas.

So it’s a positive sign that PRC commissioners and staff have stepped up and recognized the importance of beginning to regulate themselves. And then done it.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.